2018 Mélange Botrytis

Vintage 2018

Varietal blend 90% Semillon, 9% Sauvignon Blanc, 1%

Muscadelle

Harvest date 16 May 2018

Bottling date 19 August 2019

Oak treatment 100% matured in French barriques

Alcohol content 12.5%

Residual 132 g/litre

Preservatives Sulphur dioxide (220)

Ageing potential 10+ years

Winemaking

Suitably Botrytised bunches were painstakingly hand-selected in the vineyard and hand-sorted in the winery prior to a protracted whole-bunch pressing. After overnight settling, the super-sweet juice was racked to a stainless steel tank for fermentation. Once the ferment neared completion and reached a desired balance of alcohol and residual sugar, the wine was chilled, filtered and transferred for ageing in old 225-litre barriques for 18 months.

Winemaker’s notes

The 2018 vintage provided uniquely ideal late-season conditions from a

drawn-out growing season which presented the opportunity to follow-up our inaugural 2017 vintage Botrytis-influenced sweet Sauternes-style dessert wine from our Maroondah Highway vineyard. This time-honoured wine style brings an unctuous expression to our mature-age Semillon vines (an uncommon but important variety in the Yarra Valley’s history) which is enhanced further through the introduction of small but essential complexing elements of late-harvested Sauvignon Blanc for restrained acidity and Muscadelle for perfume.

Concentrated and complexed via infection of the selected berries with the noble Botrytis cinerea, this wine is rich and hedonistic, luscious and viscous yet elegant and structured. Aromas of honeycomb and beeswax, orange blossom, golden dumplings, sugar, orange marmalade, and cardamom cream meld with flavours of ginger orange poppy seed cake, crème brûlée and Canelé de Bordeaux. A layering of phenolics on the finish helps extend the palate, giving resolution and profundity, drawing the palate to length and keeping the in check. It will gain further richness and dark allure with careful cellaring over 10+ years.